


be all my sins remembered

by lalaietha



Series: Renegotiations of Fate [1]
Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Other, Tylendel Didn't Die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-04
Updated: 2012-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-30 14:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/lalaietha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"His body aches; dimly, he remembers Jaysen's hands on him, hitting the ground with Jaysen on top of him, stopping him at the edge of the cliff; Savil's hands, and fighting, fighting everything, <i>leave me be, let me go</i> - but the pain there is nothing to the sucking black emptiness in his head."</p><p>An AU where Tylendel is prevented from committing suicide after Gala repudiates him and dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	be all my sins remembered

**Author's Note:**

> Contains mentions of suicide and descriptions of suicidal ideation, canon levels of (mostly mental health related) ableism and related language, and discusses attempts of fairly egregious emotional manipulation by one partner of the other to unfortunate consequences; however, none of these exceed canonical levels.

1.  
He is going to go mad. He twists and writhes sometimes, but his limbs don't obey, coming up short at the end of something that doesn't even bite into his skin. He cries, calls, begs and pleads to be let go, to be left to die, for the emptiness to stop. 

His body aches; dimly, he remembers Jaysen's hands on him, hitting the ground with Jaysen on top of him, stopping him at the edge of the cliff; Savil's hands, and fighting, fighting everything, _leave me be, let me go_ \- but the pain there is nothing to the sucking black emptiness in his head.

Every time Tylendel reaches for _her_ , she's gone. There's nothing there, except cold dead blue eyes and the memory of blood. He claws after Gala in the dark but there's a wall he can't get past, and besides, she threw him away. Let him go. Repudiated him. _You are not my Chosen._

Gala did. Gala. Gala, Gala, Galagala _gala_. . . .

They feed him something that tastes bitter. He is sorry it isn't poison, when he half-wakes again - this time divorced a little from the pain but still staring at the emptiness. His mind is like a cell, and the door to _her_ is not just closed, but blasted away. And his mind doesn't work. He claws back from _her_ place inside him, but no, Stav's gone too, his brother, his twin is gone. He's all alone. Why is he still here? Why can't he go? Why can't the darkness just - 

There is a light, dimly, in the prison of his mind. A window out of his cell. Flickering and tiny and turned away - _oh._

_Vanyel_. Vanyel, Van - in his mind he crawls towards the light, the warmth, like a man freezing to death. He clutches it to him, curls himself against it like a dog beside a fire, but it's not enough. It can't be enough. It's not going to be enough, but he can't _leave_ while it's _here_ , he can't leave the light behind . . . .

But. There are thoughts in Vanyel's head. In Van's head, in Tylendel's love. Thoughts about leaving, the way Tylendel wants to leave. They grow like rotten weeds from other thoughts, dark thoughts, thoughts of guilt and loathing and tainted broken wrongness. Those, they come from outside of Van and shouldn't be there, but Tylendel doesn't care, because they lead to what he wants. What he wants. What is best. They can leave. They can both go together. That would be the best thing in the world, to go, to find Gala and Stav on the other side, together - 

He wraps himself around that bright spark of Van, of best-beloved-other-self, and quiets every noise but the thoughts of leaving, and hides those from the painful brightness that is sharing his own place in Vanyel's mind and is to Gala like a hearthfire to an inferno.

 

2.  
Tylendel swims in a mental wash of grey: grey sea, grey sky, grey mind, floating in an internal ocean and hoping he'll drown. The grey water keeps the burning at bay. Two burnings, in the end: one where someone isn't, and one where someone inescapably is. 

There is a third, where something has scarred over, where something got blasted away and then burned shut, but Tylendel doesn't have enough in him to care. He is only alive because he can't do anything about it. These things are engraved on his mind and on his body: Jays weight on his body as he's stopped from casting himself off the edge of the cliff; Savil's mental "hands" catching him and holding him tight, twisting his remaining Gifts in around himself until he gave up and fell back into the Healer's offered sleep; the shield that slammed down between him and Vanyel, when Van had tried to kill himself . . . . 

These things won't leave him alone. No more than Gala's last look and the cold emptiness in his head, when she ripped and tore herself away before she died. 

_I do not know you. You are not my Chosen._

Stav is gone. Gala is gone. Vanyel isn't. And apparently Tylendel isn't allowed to be, either. 

He's not sure where he is. Where _they_ are, because he can feel Vanyel and Savil and someone else, the someone else who came through his dreams and led him to this half-waking. Green-blue, alien, powerful. But he's pulled back away from that presence. Back into the grey. They're not in Haven. He can't think of anywhere in Valdemar they could be, not that he's trying. He's pulled away back into the grey, eyes closed and mind listless. 

If he opens his eyes, the grey will be assaulted by the light of the room, the colour of the bedspread, the bright living shades and vines of the walls, the wood he thinks must be living that makes up one wall. The grey is already assaulted by the soft scents (countered only by his own and the need for a bath) and by the gentle sounds of water, wind and calling birds. 

The grey is assaulted by these things but not shattered, not until the moment that a soft, low, most-beloved voice says, "Ashke?" Then everything breaks, like a jar dropped on the floor, and Tylendel is engulfed in pain, and loss, and anger, and regret. 

Tylendel's eyes open, less of his own will than in shock. Vanyel - Van is standing in the doorway. His hair is loose and he's wearing strange clothes; his face is white and his eyes are wide. He's hanging in the doorway like he's not sure he's allowed to come in, hesitant as a dog that's been kicked. 

His presence is a thread of amber and silver in through Tylendel's mind, warmth and life and silk. And behind it is terrible fear and terrible pain, and Tylendel knows Van is lost, completely lost, and Tylendel knows it might be Tylendel's fault. 

Van stands in his doorway, like a lifeline, like a beacon, like a lighthouse, like salvation. A spar in a storm, something he can reach out to. Van is living, breathing warmth, he will come to Tylendel and never leave, and Van needs Tylendel more than anything else in the world, in turn, more than anything.

Stav is dead, Gala is dead. 

Tylendel closes his eyes and turns his face resolutely towards the wall, jaw clenched until he finds the grey again and Vanyel goes away. 

 

3.  
Moondance feels it first, but the backlash, the pulse of pain, the outcry and the ripping mental snarl are enough that even Wingsister Savil is on her feet, face white, following Moondance as he wordlessly throws himself at the door, mind reaching out to his charges even as his body is a few steps behind. 

What he finds does not surprise. It doesn't surprise, but he grieves nonetheless; not for the first time he bitterly curses the ways of the flawed world, that no matter how careful the parent or the healer, the teacher or the leader, there always comes the point where you must step back and allow the charge the chance to fail. And to harm themselves, by failing. 

And sometimes, when they take that chance, they do.

His body moves down from the ekele, but his mind is already there, in the room as Tylendel picks himself up from the floor where Yfandes' mind-lash threw him like a doll, his face full of shock and pain and deeper hurt. Moondance's mind is there, as young Vanyel stares, wide-eyed and pulled back, half-dressed. 

And there, when Yfandes' voice snarls _:Don't. You. **Dare.** :_ Snarls clear into the space between three minds, a snarl more suited to a predator than something that wears a horse's shape, and with everything she means thrown onto the last word and cast hard into Tylendel's mind. 

Moondance winces, and he is now at Vanyel's door. He had meant to take time. To in time to draw Tylendel to awareness of his manipulation of Vanyel, of the advantage he took of his lifebonded, of the grave-if-unment transgression and crime, in twisting his own lifemate into a tool to be used in his revenge with no thought to Vanyel at all. He had meant to show it gently, as something past, as something to be avoided in future, as the mistakes of a young, troubled man. Gently, and with care, that the lesson might do no more harm than the transgression already had.

Yfandes' revelation held no such gentleness and very little care. And if Moondance is grieved, he cannot blame her. Not if Tylendel would have begun again, as twisted as he is right now. Not if Tylendel would have pulled Vanyel back to him and warped him. 

Not for something that is as she is, and Vanyel so bound into her soul. 

Moondance isn't used to heat in leshy'e, but there is nothing cold in her anger. This time when she speaks it is only to Moondance, not bothering with relaying through her sister leshy'e or through Savil to him. _:Bring Van down to me,:_ she says, and if she were human it would come through her teeth. _:We need to talk. We tried this your way, k'Treva, but I won't let him twist my Chosen again, and Van's too open to it. I will look after mine. You do what you want with the other.:_

As he pushes open the door, with Savil and his own lifemate come close behind, Moondance sighs again. And prays silently in his soul that the Goddess will grant he not be needed outside the Vale for some days to come. 

 

4.  
Eventually, Moondance leaves him back in bed again. As the Healing Adept closes the screens behind him, he pauses and says to Tylendel, like something remote and cool, "The only way out of this is on your own feet, ke'chara." 

For that, Tylendel wants to throw something at him twice over: once, for the fortune-teller meaninglessness of the words, and twice, for the gall of Moondance's endearment. But right now casting stones, or anything else, at a Healing Adept seems like both more work than it is worth, and more foolishness than even he is willing to act out. 

He lies on the bed, but he can't get to sleep. The day is too bright, and he's been abed too long anyway. He remembers this, from before - his mind stutters over the name and then he grinds his teeth and forces himself: before _Gala_ , too-bright _bitch_. Remembers from when his mind-storms would take everything, and he'd just try to sleep as much as possible. He fell into the fits less, when he was asleep and it made the days pass. But the time would always come when his body was tired of lethargy, and sleep became elusive and impossible, however bored or tired he was, however long he lay there. 

That time has come. But he lies there anyway, muscles loose, half-curled in the nest of blankets he's worked around himself. Sometimes he closes his eyes and tries to doze. Sometimes he stares at his hand, reached out along a blanket-fold beside him. 

He would try starving himself to death, except that he's fairly sure that Moondance could take over his body, at the last resort, and let go only once Tylendel had swallowed. Still, Tylendel considers making him do it. Wonders if they, if any of them really want him alive _that_ badly, to take over cleaning him and feeding him like an infant-brained invalid. He wonders if they have any _reason_ for wanting him alive, beyond not killing Vanyel, precious, Chosen, Mage-Gifted Van. 

_:I do,:_ says Vanyel's mind in his at that thought, and Tylendel jerks awake, startled to sitting. The blankets tangle around his thighs and calves, pulling in uncomfortable ways, and Tylendel's back twinges at the speed. 

Vanyel's dressed again. Tylendel doesn't know how the hell he got into the room - well, maybe Tylendel dozed more than he thought. But Vanyel's here, now, sitting cross-legged on the ground. He looks almost Tayledras. Tylendel hates it, and, for a moment, him. 

And Van - Vanyel's trying so very hard to be composed, adult, grounded and strong, but Tylendel knows him. Knows him inside out and backwards, because once you get past the first, hard, outermost shell Vanyel Ashkevron is a skinless open book, and Vanyel Ashkevron is scared, just now. Scared badly, confused and lost. 

Some part of Tylendel wants to open up his arms and take Vanyel into them, let him cry and kiss the tears away, and pull Van fast and true into all the empty places in Tylendel's soul, stretch him out until he fills all of them and Tylendel is the center of his world and there's nothing in it but them. Wants it badly enough that his next breath might as well be a hitching, silent sob and his fingers curl of their own accord. 

Most of him remembers, vividly, the lash of Vanyel's bitch-Companion's mind against his - and remembers seeing that mind, seeing it so far beyond him that he cringes away from the thought of what she is and what she can do. That, and the words that had been for him and him alone - _never again, once-Chosen. Never again while he's mine._

So he does nothing. Stays still and tries to push his way back to the nothingness, the greyness, the quiet. 

Still, even then - the grey ocean is less than it could be. Less than he needs. He could laugh at how now he's the one with the nightmares of ice-fields (vast empty grey skies and nothingness), and could wish desperately, maybe even madly, that it would be so easy to chase them away: just a body and a heart, just sex and words of affection. Would that it were that easy. He wants it to be. He could have made it closer, he could still try. 

He can't sense Yfandes, can't hear her. But he knows she's there, watching him, and he hates her beyond words, and hates Vanyel for having her. He lies back down and stares at the wall, and refuses even to ask what the hell Vanyel wants. 

After the silence has stretched long enough to be torturous, Vanyel finally speaks. In a very quiet voice, that he obviously hopes is more even than timid, he says, "'Fandes says you knew the Gate would probably kill me." 

Tylendel wants to laugh, but it doesn't come out. It just sits there, clawing at his chest, digging talons in and ripping them away. Of course she told him. He deserves this, doesn't he? For being the monster Gala wouldn't keep in order to avenge the murdered twin no one else seemed to give a tinker's god-damn about. He deserves this for _being_. For being wrong, from the beginning: he's always been wrong. Stav couldn't fix him, Gala couldn't fix him, and now the bitch-Companion's going to make sure Vanyel doesn't even try. Better for Vanyel. Better for her, too. And she can have him. She's _welcome_ to him. 

"She's right," he says, without looking at Vanyel at all, keeping his voice dull and uninterested. He wants to cry. He wants to laugh. He wants to slit his own throat and dance on his own grave. He wishes he'd thrown himself under Gala's hooves in expiation. He wishes Jaysen hadn't stopped him, at the cliff. He wishes Stav had just let them kill him. He wishes Donni and Mardic and Savil had just _let Vanyel die_ in that god-damned Temple, let him take them both to Havens or Hell, wherever they were bound. 

He wishes the Healing Adept would just find a way to sever them, so Vanyel could go on and be the Heraldic hero he was clearly meant to be, and leave Tylendel here, to live or die in blank grey waters of his own mind. 

He makes himself say, in the same voice, "You weren't as important to me as revenge," before he slams up every shield he's ever had and pulls the blanket over his head. 

It's a few minutes, still, before he hears Vanyel get up and go away. 

 

5.  
It's Savil's voice that rouses him this time, her voice saying his name. He feels her sitting on the side of his bed. He doesn't mean to open up his shields to her, but he does by instinct, by rote. She has been, in some ways, the only mother he really had, since his own abandoned him as cursed. So the shields he raised against Vanyel come down without any real thought, and his Empathy opens to the woman sitting beside his bed. 

He waits for anger, for frustration, for resentment and disgust. He only finds . . . . grief. And exhaustion, and grief again, so deep.

"Oh, I was angry at you, ke'chara," she says, and he jerks away, shields half-raised again. "At both of you. Van's run off. Even Yfandes can't find out where he is." She sighs. "And I know damn well it's because of whatever you told him. So I was angry. Then Moondance went and asked me why. And what good it did. And I couldn't figure." 

Tylendel pulls away. He wants to hide his head under the pillows, wants to push her to the other side of the door. He wants all of them to leave him _alone_. He's not sure why this is so hard. He's not sure why the hell they won't. He'll shield Vanyel out. Vanyel will learn to get along. He'll stay alive, if that's what they really want of him, to keep Van from going crazy but why can't they leave him alone? Why can't they go away? Why can't they just stop? Why do they want him, after everything he's done by now? 

"I'm sorry, ke'chara," Savil says. Her voice is heavy. It hurts him. He wants her to shut up. He doesn't want to hear this. He doesn't want the burden of her hurt, the weight of it pressing on the guilt that's already choking him. To hell with her and to hell with the Tayledras and to hell with Vanyel, Vanyel and his Companion beside him, oh-so-watchful, oh-so-loving, oh-so-protective. To hell with them. Fuck them. Demons take them and be gone. 

He doesn't realize he was crying until the sheet under his face is wet through, because there aren't sobs. And Savil isn't stopping. 

She says, "More of this is my fault than is yours, my heart. And I am sorry. I should have watched you closer; I should have known that Stav's death would hurt you too deep to swim through on your own. I should have had Andy look at you. Or brought you here. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, ke'chara - didn't want to smother you, I guess, or impose myself on you and Van. Maybe it was just easier. I don't know. And I'm sorry." 

The words hurt, and he wants to strike her, to hurt her back - but what was the point? He's weak, sick, and she's a mage and he isn't anymore. There's nothing he can do. She wants to fix him, with this. She wants to take the weight away

"Go away," he manages to whisper. "Just go away." 

After a few breaths, there's the sound of Savil getting to her feet. "There's trouble over on k'Treva border," she says, voice heavy and empty. "Moondance, Starwind and I are taking the Companions and going to have a look at it. Foxstar is going to keep an eye on you, until we get back." 

He stirs, half-unwilling with the thought what about Van - 

"Vanyel's perfectly capable of keeping himself intact, in the Vale," she says, as if she heard him, even behind mental walls. "If he doesn't make it back here by the time we do, we'll look for him then." 

She's gone by the time Tylendel's mustered the will to roll over, and stare at the screens that close behind her.

*****

1.  
Vanyel ducks his head under the pump and then nearly smashes his skull in when 'Lendel's voice says, very quietly, "Heyla," from somewhere above him. In the effort of avoiding the pump's spout, Vanyel falls over instead. Some part of him, the part that still has any pride at all after these last weeks, is glad he hadn't wet his hair yet. Or else he'd look truly ridiculous.

Most of him says that at this point, he's done so many foolish things he shouldn't bother having any pride left in the first place. 

'Lendel stands a few feet back. His hair is a rat's-nest and he wears what looks like salvaged bits of some Tayledras' wardrobe, belted in at the waist to take into account how thin he is. And he is thin, terribly thin: the spaces under his cheeks hollowed out and circles haunting his eyes. One of the villagers - Fana, Vanyel thinks her name is - is standing beside 'Lendel and bobs a little curtsey. She's young, just a girl, but sometimes Vanyel thinks she's far more confident of things than he is. 

"'e said 'e was from the Bird-lords, young Master," she tells him, "an' 'e didn't seem the least bit of magic t'my eyes - " 

Vanyel sees the slightest wince from 'Lendel at that, but 'Lendel doesn't say anything. Just stands there, still hanging back, like. 

Vanyel realizes he's still in the dirt and scrambles to his feet. It's a good thing the villagers think he's worth listening to without his maintaining any kind of decorum, because by this point he'd be hopelessly lost otherwise. "He is," he says belatedly to Fana. "He's - " but then he has to stop, because he can't say _he's Herald-Mage Savil's other student,_ and he can't say _he's another Herald-Trainee_ , so he can only end rather lamely, "he's with Herald-Mage Savil. And me." 

Fana might not know why - Vanyel hoped to Kernos she doesn't know why - but the awkwardness clearly doesn't escape her, and she curtseys again and says, "I'll just leave 'im with you then, Master," and takes herself away to keep helping with the preparations - which involve as much food as improvised armour _or_ boar-spears, as it turns out. Another one of those things that he'd never bothered to think about. There seemed to be so many of them.

Her departure leaves Vanyel and Tylendel to stand there and look at each other, uncomfortably. And Vanyel all alone, behind shields he didn't think before putting up, to fight both the urge to give his lifemate a black eye, or to throw himself at 'Lendel and kiss him until they both combusted out of sheerest desire and love. 

Or both. One after the other. Maybe more than once. 

'Lendel swallows. He says, with pained casual tone, "They seem to like you here." 

And Vanyel says, in almost the same tone, "Yes, well. Starwind and Savil left me in charge. These people were patient while I figured it out. Sort of." 

"So I heard." 

Then silence again, and the silence hurts so that Vanyel opens his mouth to feign friendliness and unconcern, and ask 'Lendel to come inside - 

"I'm sorry," 'Lendel says, instead, hoarse and tight. The words snap out like they have to be forced; maybe they do. 

Vanyel finds breathing hard for a moment. He can't move. He's still torn - this time between flinging himself at 'Lendel, still, or running away, as fast and as far as he can, with 'Fandes' caution still ringing in his ears - : _His mind is sick, and his soul. He is dangerous to you, whether he intends it or not._ : And with the echo, the remains of the desire to reject it, as well as the knowledge that it's true. 

He resists the urge to reach for her, call to her: Savil and Starwind and Moondance need her more, right now. He will have to do this alone. And he tells himself that's the reason, too.

'Lendel just watches Vanyel as he freezes, and then 'Lendel looks down. "I'm so sorry. Van, I - I want to say I was an idiot," and he looks up and his eyes are wet, but he doesn't try to cross the distance between them this time, and he doesn't reach out mind to mind - his shields are so mewed tight, in fact, that Vanyel can't feel anything from him at all. Except that he's there. Except that he is 'Lendel.

'Lendel's voice is cracked, almost as ruined as a boy's when it's breaking. "I want to say I was an idiot," he says, through it, something through his teeth. "That I was stupid and a fool, but gods, I - " he shakes his head. "Van, I don't think I'm a fool, I think I'm crazy," he spits the words out. And Vanyel is grateful that the girl seems to have warned everyone else away, so that there's no one to see this - for 'Lendel's sake, not his own. 

His chest hurts. 

'Lendel swallows again and seems to force his voice even. "And I don't know if I can get better, anymore. I don't know, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, and I don't - you, I, I did," and he lifts one hand as if trying to gesture and mean everything he can't seem to say, the words choking themselves up in his throat again. He looks away from Vanyel, staring hard at the ground to the left of him, with wet eyes. "I think," he says, in a hard voice, but one that shakes even so, "that Yfandes is right, you're probably better off without me, and I have no right to ask anything from you and I'm not trying to twist you this time, Van, I'm not, but if you could - I, please - " 

The words fall like rocks onto glass. It's like a light, suddenly. Everything becomes simple. Like a - no, not like a bone, broken, but like a joint dislocated clicking back into place: sudden release, pain, and the knowledge that it will ache for time to come, but everything working, everything as it should be, everything the way it was meant to be. 

It's all simple. 

He takes two steps and stops 'Lendel's babbling by pulling 'Lendel's face down, pressing 'Lendel's mouth to his, tongue against 'Lendel's lips and shields opening as 'Lendel's mouth opened for him and 'Lendel's mind, and this time 'Lendel was the one clinging to Vanyel like a drowning, dying, freezing man to air and warmth and life. 

The kiss breaks but the embrace doesn't, 'Lendel still clinging and Vanyel trying not to hold him so hard he cracks his ribs. "You are an idiot, ashke," he says, fiercely, in 'Lendel's ear. "You're an idiot for thinking I could ever be better off without you." And 'Fandes had never said otherwise, but he'll leave that for later. For later, when they can think about what to do with the bruised, abused limb. 

For now, 'Lendel just needs to remember how to breathe. And then they have a village to prepare.


End file.
